I’m writing this from the Eurostar heading from a brief sojourn in Paris at the end of my holidays. As the frosty French countryside hurtles by my window I’m thinking about time and how quickly it too often passes. We’re already four days into 2017, an age by when my primary school predictions would have us travelling in hover cars and vacationing on the moon. I certainly didn’t imagine I’d be worrying about nearing middle age and afraid I wasn’t making the most of my life.

The calendar changing is the perfect reminder that every moment is an opportunity for a new beginning. Last week I wrote about freeing ourselves of our old junk — our resentments, our grudges, any emotional baggage we might be carrying — in order to create space and energy for happier and more productive pursuits.

Have you considered yet what those promising new endeavours and challenges will be? What is it time to focus on? What would really help make 2017, and life thereafter, all the sweeter and more satisfying?

Whether it’s letting something go or taking on something new, change in any form usually requires courage. Change is scary, even when it’s a change for the better. Consciously we might not think so, but we humans are preprogrammed to maintain status quo, play it safe, stick to the devil we know. Evolutionarily this pattern has served us and still we will often find comfort in the certainty of even unhealthy behaviours or situations than opt for something new.

Newness brings too many questions: what will it be like? What else will have to change? What if it doesn’t work out and I’m worse off than I am now? Change feels threatening because it is full of risk. Investors, however, might tell you that some risks are required to reap greater rewards.

In my experience, what has stopped me from doing the things I’ve wanted to do — once I’ve blast through all my excuses and hesitations — ultimately always comes down to fear! Ninety per cent fear and ten per cent mix of not feeling good enough or deserving of it — which I reckon are fear-based anyway.

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it,” as Nelson Mandela so rightly said. Sometimes the things we fear most are the very things that we most need to do, to liberate us from fear’s clutches, to make the most of ourselves, to reach our goals and destinations.

The French use the word a lot as an expression of encouragement: ‘good luck, take heart!’ And doesn’t everything sound that little bit sexier in a French accent?

So this coming year, be brave. Have that difficult conversation, do what needs to be done, change the circumstances you’re not satisfied with, push the edges of your comfort zone, try again, speak up for what you believe in, be your true self. If you’d like to talk it through and create a strategic plan for yourself, that’s what I’m here for.

Whether your goals for 2017 are to make big changes or minor tweaks: bon courage!

•Julia Pitt is a trained success coach and certified NLP practitioner on the team at Benedict Associates. For further information contact Julia on 705-7488, www.juliapittcoaching.com.